Jazz

Legendary French violinist Jean Luc Ponty and his band will be continuing their 'Atlantic Years' tour in the US beginning August 2018! Jean Luc Ponty is a pioneer and undisputed master of the violin in the arena of jazz and rock. He is widely regarded as an innovator who has applied his unique visionary spin that has expanded the vocabulary of modern music...

All About Jazz is celebrating Miles Davis' birthday today!
Throughout a professional career lasting 50 years, Miles Davis played the trumpet in a lyrical, introspective, and melodic style, often employing a stemless harmon mute to make his sound more personal and intimate. But if his approach to his instrument was constant, his approach to jazz was dazzlingly protean. To examine his career is to examine the history of jazz from the mid-\'40s to the early \'90s... Read more...

Composer, arranger, educator and jazz authority Jeff Sultanof occasionally honors Rifftides with his insights. This is one of those happy occasions. Jeff has seen a restoration of King Of Jazz, a pioneering film from the days when motion picture studios had decided that sound was here to stay.
King Of Jazz: A Guest Review By Jeff Sultanoff...

ALTERNATIVE TAKE: Mike Masnick explores the sordid history of how the record labels' behavior in the early days of the internet literally brought the music industry to its knees, and how these same labels have been saved by the tech industry led by Apple and Spotify.
By Mike Masnick from Techdirt
If you've been following how much the record labels stumbled around the internet for the past couple of decades, then you know the basics here. But time has a way of erasing some of the nuances of history, and I find it incredible to watch the RIAA and the record labels these days walking around proudly acting as if they were the ones who "saved" the music industry by embracing streaming services that now make up the bulk of the recording industry's revenues. Indeed, as we've pointed out for years, the recording industry has a very long history of overvaluing the music and undervaluing the services that people want. They've spent so long insisting that the music is the sole source of the value of what they produce, that they always downplay (or entirely erase) the rest of the equation: getting the music to fans in a manner that is convenient, reasonable, and non-burdensome. Instead, they always focus on killing the golden goose -- insisting that any successful music tech service pay them more and more until they're squeezed dry...

Although some self-promoting musicians may choose to eschew the platfrom, Chris Robley here details why the controversial social network still holds significant value for artists as promotional tool, particularly in comparison to some of the other social media platforms out there.
Guest post by Chris Robley of DIY Musician...

In this piece Fiona Z shares five recently discovered valuable tools artists can use to improve their online experience, streamline social media usage, edit video, sign online paperwork and more!
Guest post from Fiona Z
Lately, I've been diving into summits, podcasts and I've also signed up to go to CD Baby's DIY Musician Conference (let me know if you'll be there). I am trying to take the rest of the month for research, education and learning what is new out there, what works and what doesn't. I'm not going to lie, it's overload, but it's also exciting to get a spark back in how I can help my clients...

While streaming services may often be touted as the saviors of the music industry, label execs are no fans of the 'free tiers' offered by most of these platforms, arguing that the widen the music business's value gap.
Guest post by Bobby Owsinski of Music 3.0
If you were to poll record label execs off-the-record on which music streaming service they like the most in a strictly business-sense, chances are that Apple Music would end up as the clear winner. Why? Apple has steadfastly refused to institute a free ad-driven tier...

All About Jazz is celebrating Wallace Roney's birthday today!
Wallace Roney is from Philadelphia, PA, born May 25, 1960. He began his musical studies at the age of five, learning rhythmic dictation and sight-reading. He began playing the trumpet at age six. He was identified as a prodigy and was awarded a scholarship to the Settlement School of Music at the age of seven. It is there that Wallace received private trumpet lesson with Sigmund Herring at the age of ten. As a child prodigy... Read more...

News has arrived that the pianist Jack Reilly died of a massive stroke on Friday at his home in New Jersey. Mr. Reilly, 86, was an accomplished classical and jazz pianist who returned to his native New York in 1954 following Navy service and pursued graduate studies at the Manhattan School of Music. His early experience in jazz was with John LaPorta, Sheila Jordan, Ben Webster and George Russell, among other prominent figures in the bebop and post-bop eras...

Vevo has announced that it will shut down its mobile apps and video web site in the coming weeks, and make YouTube its sole delivery platform. The shift also strengthens YouTube's dominance in music just as it launches its biggest push into paid streaming yet.
Vevo is shuttering its mobile apps and web site, the music video service announced on Thursday. Vevo videos will continue to be available via YouTube, which the company says will include new and original content and video premiers. Vevo says that it is also "exploring ways to work with additional platforms to further expand access to Vevo's content...

European digital music rights organization ICE announced a new multi-territory licensing deal with dance music-focused digital music service Mixcloud. Mixcloud's new 'Core' licence deal with ICE covers PRS, STIM and GEMA repertoire for their combined 290,000 members and repertoire for some of the leading independent music publishers...

A meeting between four incredible pianists, often fellow travellers of the leader in the past, and the percussionist Luc Vanden Bosch is making a whole new concept of this record, and the evolution of Phil Abraham's international career. The trombonist and singer performed in many countries, several times in the US (jny: Seattle, jny: New York CIty, jny: Los Angeles) and recently in China. His reputation is well established both as sideman (m: Michel Petrucciani, m: Clark Terry, m: Art Farmer, m: Dee Dee Bridgewater, Charles Aznavour) and as leader (11 albums under his name), but also as professor of his own instrument (Royal Conservatoire of Brussels, lots of workshops and master classes all around)...

TenGanG is a Cameroonian artist (singer, guitarist, songwriter) living in France. He is inspired by all the music of the world, but he makes albums in distinct styles, either based on progressive rock, or based on Jazz, which is very rare, if not unique.
TenGanG's previous album Symphony Of Noise In French Troubled Waters with guest singers, was a prog rock album. With his new album Fusic-Jazz-Funk To My Musical Heiress With Nothing But My Male Voice, he changes directions, this time fusing jazz and funk and other influences, and, apart from some guitar work, all the other sounds are performed by TenGanG a la m: Bobby McFerrin...

All About Jazz is celebrating Archie Shepp's birthday today!
Archie Shepp was born in 1937 in Fort Lauderdale in Florida. He grew up in Philadelphia, studied piano and saxophone and attended high school in Germantown; he went to college, became involved with theatre, met writers and poets, among them, Leroy Jones and wrote: The Communist , an allegorical play about the situation of black Americans. In the late fifties, Archie Shepp also met the most radical musicians of the time: Lee Morgan... Read more...

With music consumption habits changing so much in recent years and showing no signs of stopping, the techniques for promoting must also adapt. Here we look at the importance of diversifying how to promote your music.
Guest post by Patrick McGuire from the TuneCore Blog
It's a complicated time to be making music...

All About Jazz is celebrating Artie Shaw's birthday today!
Artie Shaw, a brilliant jazz clarinetist, was one of the most enigmatic, daring and adventurous bandleaders of the swing-era. An intellectual, he hated public life and the music industry. Over the course of his short career he formed ten orchestras and disbanding most of them after only a few months. At the peak of his career in the years just before World War II... Read more...

The busy Memorial Day weekend schedule of live jazz and creative music in St. Louis includes the return of a leading light of Latin jazz; an all-star assembly of creative improvisors; a benefit raising funds for scholarships in the name of the late St. Louis saxophonist Willie Akins, and more.
Let&#39;s go the highlights...

Next-generation record label and music distributor Amuse has raised a $15.5 million Series A round co-led by Lakestar and Raine.The company was founded in Stockholm by execs from Spotify, Universal Music and Warner Music.
Using Amuse, artists can distribute their music for free to major services including Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer, etc. and keep 100% of the royalties. Amuse then leverages data to identify promising talent and signs artists through licensing deals rather than traditional contracts, which means the artists still own their work...

TuneGO, a data driven music A&R startup has completed a Series B financing totaling more than $7.7 million. Private equity firm Falcon Capital led the round. TuneGO will use the funds to enhance its technology platform and global infrastructure, which is already being used by many leading music and entertainment companies...